On Tue, Oct 12, 2004 at 01:05:30AM +0200, ma_pri_2004 wrote:
> Somebody gave me a Mac IIcI which I want to use it as a small server and
> to learn a bit more of linux. It has a Chache Card, a nic (3com
> etherlink/nb), and a graphic card with vga (supermac). I added a hard
> disc (540 MB SCSI).
> I don?t know how much ram is in it (all banks are filled). The guy who
> gave me the mac said that the floppy is broken, but all other components
> are OK.
>
> Having never used a mac, and not having linux m86k experience, I have
> the following questions:
> 1) does anyone have running sarge on an Mac IIcI? Or runs only woody?
If woody runs, then upgrading it to sarge should work fine. However, the
new installer may or may not work. I know people had slink running on
those things, if nothing else. The upgrade from slink to woody wasn't
too terrible.
> 2) Do driver for the 3Com Etherlink/NB exist?
> At http://www.linux-m68k.org/faq/faq.html is written (debian manual
> says to look there):
> "As for drivers, we have NCR5380 and NCR53c9&lsqb;46&rsqb; SCSI, Mac
> IDE, NS8390 (Daynaport) Ethernet, NuBus, ADB (Mac-II, IIsi and CUDA
> styles) for keyboard and mouse (also used by some NeXTs), video (most
> of Apple's video boards, except RBV--RAM-based video--boards), and
> probably some other goodies. We also have a working installer and
> booter (Penguin)."
> Googling showed me that some guys used this NIC with NetBSD
That list of drivers is pretty old. There are drivers for three or four
different expansion board designs. If you can read any part numbers
from the chips on the ethernet card, that is probably enough to say if
one of the current drivers should work.
> 3) Any idea how to find out what the model of this "SuperMac"-Card is?
> At www.xfree86.org I didn?t find driver for any SuperMac cards.
> After googling I know from a photo that it is not a SuperMac
> Thunder24.
> On the card are 5 chips called: "BT", "BSR03", "ECLIPTEK EC1100
> 44.900 MHz", "SQD-01", the last one is unreadable
No video card that works in a 68k Mac is directly supported by xfree86.
We have to use X with the generic framebuffer driver, which means it
just uses the support built into the kernel for the console. It's slow,
but as long as the kernel can display anything for the console, then
X will work, too. It is hard to say if it works without trying it. Many
nubus video cards not only do not work, they keep everything else from
working because the interrupts from the card flood the system. I have
a radius card that kills linux every time.
The IIci has video built into the motherboard (RBV), but that has been
known to cause problems sometimes. Even the most minor changes to the
kernel seem to break it until someone fixes it. However, some kernels
are known to have working support (2.2.x only, I think).
Brad Boyer
flar@allandria.com